The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture

The Real Nature of the Majority of Modern Agricultural
                     “Farms” (Proletarian “Farms”)

Ofthe “farmers” with less than two hectares of land, themajorityare wage-workers by their chief occupation. For them
agriculture is an auxiliary occupation. Of the 3,378,509 enterprises in
this group, 2,920419 are auxiliary concerns (Nebenbetriebe). A quite small
minority,14per cent in all, 475,000 out of 3,4 million, are
independent cultivators, and this includes those who havein
additionan auxiliary, non-agricultural occupation.

* ...Itis to be noted that the number of

			     wage-workers[1]in this groupexceedsthe number of independent cultivators.

Thisfact indicates that the statistics here lump together with the
mass of proletarians those few capitalist cultivators who carry out
large-scale farming on a small plot of land. We shall repeatedly encounter
this type in the course of our exposition.

Thequestion arises of the significance of these masses of proletarian
“farmers” in the general system of agriculture. In the first place, they
represent the link between the feudal and the capitalist systems of social
economy, their close connection and their kinship historically, a direct
survival of serfdom in capitalism. If, for example, we see in Germany and
particularly in Prussia that the statistics of agricultural enterprises
include plots of land (known as Deputatland) which the landlord gives the
agricultural labourer as part of hiswages, is this not a direct survival of serfdom? The difference between
serfdom, as an economic system, and capitalism lies in the fact that the
formerallotsland to the worker, whereas the latterseparatesthe worker from the land; the former gives the worker
the means of subsistencein kind(or forces him to produce them
himself on his “allotment”), the latter gives the worker payment in
money, with which hebuysthe means of subsistence. Of course, in
Germany this survival of serfdom is quite insignificant compared with what
we see in Russia with her notorious “labour-rent” system of landlord
farming, nevertheless it is a survival of serfdom. The 1907 census in
Germany counted 579,500 “agricultural enterprises” belonging toagricultural workers and day-labourers, and of these 540,751
belong to the group of “farmers” with less than two hectares of land.

Inthe second place, the bulk of the “farmers” owning such
insignificant plots of land that it is impossible to make a living from
them, and which represent merely an “auxiliary occupation”, form part of
thereserve army of unemployedin the capitalist system as a
whole. It is, to use Marx’s term, thehiddenform of this

army.[3]It would be wrong to imagine that this reserve army of
unemployed consists only of workers who are out of work. It includes also
“peasants” or “petty farmers” who are unable to exist on what they get
from their minute farm, whohave totry to obtain their means of
subsistence mainly by hiring out their labour. Their kitchen garden or
potato plot serves this army of the poor as a means of supplementing their
wages or of enabling them to exist when they are not employed. Capitalism
requires these “dwarf”, “parcellised” pseudo-farms so that without
expense it canalwayshave a mass of cheap labour at its
disposal. According to the 1907 census, out of two million “farms” of
less than half a hectare 624,000 have only horticultural land and 361,000
have only a potato field. The total cultivated area of these two million
“farms” is 247,000 hectares, of which more than half, namely, 166,000
hectares, isunder potato. The total cultivated area of the
million and a quarter “farms” with one-half to two hectares is 976,000
hectares, of whichmore than a third, namely, 334,000 hectares, is
under potato. Deterioration of the people’s diet (replacement of bread by
potatoes) and cheaper labour-power for the employers—suchis the significance of the “farming” of three million agricultural
“farms” out of the five million in Germany.

Toconclude the description of these proletarian farms, let us add that
almost one-third of them (one million out of 3.4 million) do not possess
livestock of any kind, two-thirds (2.5 out of 3.4 million) do not have any
cattle, more than nine-tenths (3.3 out of 3.4 million) have no horses. The
share of these proletarian farms in the total agricultural production is
minimal: three-fifths of them have less than one-tenth of all the cattle
(2.7 million out of 29.4 million head, reckoning all livestock in terms of
cattle), and one-twentieth of all the cultivated area (1.2 out of
24.4 million hectares).

Onecan imagine what confusion and falsity is introduced into the
subject by statistics whichlump togetherin this group of farms
of less than two hectares of landmillionsof proletarians without
horses or cattle and with only a kitchen garden or potato field andthousandsof big farmers, capitalists, who conduct big
cattle-raising or horticultural and suchlike enterprises on 1-2
dessiatines. That such farmers are contained in this group is evident if
only from the fact that out of the 3.4 million (with less than two hectares
of land)15,428are farmers each of whom have six or more Workers
(taking family and wage-workers together), all of these 15,428 together
having 123,941 workers, i.e., an average of eight workers per farm. Taking
into account the special features of agriculture as regards machinery, such
a number of workers is undoubtedly an indication of large-scale capitalist
production. That large-scale cattle-raising farms are included among the
mass of proletarian “farms” of less than two hectares, I have already had
to point out on the basis of the data of the earlier census of 1895 (see my
book:The Agrarian Question, St. Petersburg, 1908,

				p. 239[2]).

It was quite possible to single out these large-scale farms by means of the
data both on the number of cattle and on the number of workers, but the
German statisticians prefer to fillhundreds of pageswith data onfivesubdivisions of the group of owners having less than half a
hectare divided intostill smallergroups according to the amount
of land!

Socio-economicstatistics—one of the most powerful means of acquiring
social knowledge—are converted in this way into a monstrosity, into
statistics for the sake of statistics, into a game.

Thatthe majority or the great bulk of agricultural enterprises belong
to the category of dwarf, parcellised, proletarian farms is a phenomenon
that is common to many if not most European capitalist countries, butnot allcapitalist countries. In America, for example, according
to data of the 1900 census, the average size of the farms is 146.6 acres
(60 hectares), i.e., 7 1/2 times as large as in Germany. The very small
farms, if one includes here those of less than 20 acres (8 hectares) form a
little over one-tenth (11.8 per cent) of the total number. Even the farms
of less than 50 acres (20 hectares) form only one-third of the total
number. In order to compare these data with the German statistics one must
take into account that farms of less than three acres (=1.2 hectares) are
included in the American census only if their gross income amounts to 500
dollars, i.e., the vast majority of farms of less than three acres are not
registered at all. Hence we must exclude also the very small farms from the
German data. Let us eliminate even all the farms of less than two hectares:
of the remaining 2,357,572 farms there will be 1,006,277 of two to five
hectares, i.e., over 40 per cent of the farms will be very small farms. In
America the situation is quite different.

Itis evident that when the traditions of serfdom are absent (or all
traces of it are more thoroughly abolished), and when the yoke imposed by
land rent on agricultural production is absent (or weakened), capitalism in
agriculture can exist and even develop with special rapidity without
creating a category of a million agricultural labourers and day-labourers
with allotments.

[1]Herethe edge of the manuscript is torn off.—Ed.

[2]Seepresent edition, Vol. 5, pp. 103–222.—-Ed.  —Lenin

[3]KarlMarx,Capital, Vol. I, Moscow, 1959, pp. 640–48.